With just three days left until I leave, I finally finalized the rest of our itinerary.
The only things that I didn't cover in the last post was my itinerary for the Great Ocean Road and the Grampians, as well as my trip to New York. We arrive in Melbourne Tuesday mid-morning, and the plan is to grab some lunch and some food for the road, and head out. There aren't really any fancy hotel options, so we booked the Comfort Inn The International in Apollo Bay for the first night. It's about 2.5 hours from Melbourne, so that should give us plenty of time to see the sights on the way. It was $122 for a twin room. For Wednesday night, I booked The Grampians Motel and The Views Bar & Restaurant for $92 for a twin room. We will return to Melbourne Thursday night where we found a family to stay by until Sunday morning, when we leave for Cairns.
Now, for the way to New York. As I mentioned before, we both had to be back in NY by Thursday night for a wedding, so I was getting a bit anxious to get something booked. On Saturday night I got an ExpertFlyer alert that DXB-JFK had opened up in F late Wednesday night, but I had only transferred my first SPG batch to JAL on Wednesday so nothing had posted yet. That flight was gone by Sunday morning. I then set alerts for EK F flights from every city in Australia, as well as a handful of South East Asian countries that I thought I could make it to in time. That's when I noticed there was plenty of space out of HKG, another market where JAL doesn't charge crazy YQ. On Monday night, I got a notification that the DXB-JFK flight had opened again, but I only had 75k miles at that point. I figured it would be Wednesday by the time it all posted, but thankfully the other 125k posted Tuesday afternoon. In case it helps anyone, it seems like SPG-JAL posts at around 4pm Israel time. I quickly called JAL, and sat on hold for an hour, after which they only managed to hold my flights as they couldn't calculate the taxes.
@shmueli2007 was also on hold, but by the time he got through they told him they can't book Emirates by phone as he can do it on the website. No amount of arguing worked. Sure enough, in the time between the end of my call and when he got through, they had added the functionality. His flights were booked in minutes while I waited for a call back that never came. After a few hours, I called back, waited an hour, and finally got my flight ticketed.
Now, we just had to get from Sydney to Hong Kong to catch the flight.. I waitlisted for several Cathay flights, but they were mostly full so I didn't have high hopes. The VA flight from Melbourne would have been amazing, and it seems to open up pretty consistently last minute, but it wouldn't get us to HKG in time. I finally found some space from Brisbane to Singapore on SQ J on the A350, with a connection to Hong Kong on the A380. It's going to be sad to be on SQ's A380 and not in a suite, but it's still a very decent option. I quickly called SQ to hold it, and transferred 53k UR (I had 5k already). I then canceled our QF CNS-SYD flight through BA, and rebooked us to Brisbane. I'm sad that we won't really have a chance to see Sydney, but we didn't have enough time to do it right anyway. I'll just need to go back! We have a 6 hour connection in Hong Kong, which should be perfect to grab some food and wander the city a bit before heading back.
Now that everything is settled, here is the breakdown of all the flights, hotels, and car rental costs:
Flights
TLV-AMM-AUH-SYD-MEL - RJ J, EY J, EY F, QF J - 100k AA (-10k rebate) + $79.91 USD
MEL-SYD-CNS - QF J - 29k BA + $30.71 USD
CNS-BNE - QF J - 15k BA + $20.65 USD
BNE-SIN-HKG - SQ J - 58k SQ + $99.30 SGD
HKG-DXB-JFK-DXB-BKK - EK F - 200k JAL (160k SPG) + $89.54 USD + $20 phone fee
I booked the return JFK-DXB for a year out and will use that leg for my next trip
